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Missteps doom dancer duo on 'Amazing Race Canada'

TORONTO - A season of missteps finally caught up to decorated ballet star Rex Harrington and his fiance Bob Hope — an improving, ever-quotable pair who were nevertheless the fifth team eliminated from "The Amazing Race Canada" on Tuesday.

Fleet of feet and wit, Harrington and his partner had become the show's droll breakout stars after initially looking like one of its weakest squads, but a whisk through Winnipeg ended their hopes of continuing on.

First, the pair made a dawdling Detour decision to pack perogies — a much more time-consuming task than the alternative — before the typically loquacious Harrington forgot the words in a goofy rock-star challenge, meaning the season's most irreverently tart-tongued duo finally fell short of the barre.

Even in defeat, a sanguine Hope called the race "the most amazing experience of our lives."

Lockstep twins Pierre and Michel Forget won the leg (and a trip to Los Cabos, Mexico) simply because the Francophone fraternity bypassed the English-intensive Road Block entirely. For that, they utilized their Express Pass, a gift from Canadian Olympians Natalie Spooner and Meaghan Mikkelson — whose journey to the centre of Canada, by the way, proved deeply humbling.

Before that, all the teams loaded on the same flight from the Yukon to Winnipeg (via Vancouver) and zoomed to the Royal Canadian Mint, where the day's first challenge required competitors to match international coins with their respective national flags. It stymied no one.

So the episode's first signs of drama came with the Detour, which offered two choices: "Pinch It," requiring teams to carefully assemble 74 perogies in the untelegenic basement of the St Ivan Suchavsky Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral; or "Puck It," tasking teams with navigating the MTS Centre ice and scoring five goals in five distinct parts of the net.

"Dude, we just beat Olympians! We ARE Olympians!" shouted Mickey and Pete upon departure.

Humiliated as they understandably were, the hockey stars were offered no respite from embarrassment at their next stop: the Winnipeg club Whiskey Dix for a Road Block singalong.

The challenge required one member of each team to memorize the lyrics to an unknown glam-metal tune called "When the Sun Goes Down" (composed by Imaginary Cities' Rusty Matyas), and perform to a packed crowd while clad in a "rock-star" getup — including silly pants, a silly shirt and an extra silly wig, along with three accessories.

Aside from the language barrier-blocked Forgets, the teams didn't struggle much with the challenge. Jinder, Natalie and Mickey all moved on after fewer than a half-dozen run-throughs apiece, mostly allowing themselves a moment to soak up a little adulation as they exited.

"I had to kiss a few babes on the way out," explained Mickey. "And then I was like, 'Not now babes. I have to go see my boyfriend Jon Montgomery.'"

Ultimately, then, it came down to a showdown between Rex and Bob and Vancouver bartenders Ryan Steele and Rob Goddard, mutually slowed by the rather dull perogy-packing challenge.

Rex finished the challenge in six tries, but couldn't have predicted that Rob possessed an inner Sunset Strip just waiting to beam out.

"I got right into character," said Rob as he donned a hot pink wig. "New me!"

He nailed the challenge on his first try, and thus relegated the show's celebrity pair to elimination.

As they jogged on to the Pit Stop, Rex and Bob actually misjudged the field and arrived believing they were in third place.

"Delusional," muttered Rex as he found out the truth.

And so, the pair's final pithy barb was self-directed. But Rex and Bob — seemingly so vulnerable in the show's early going, when they at one point abandoned two challenges in the same episode — in fact departed having proven their mettle, surviving to the series' halfway point.

Accordingly, they seemed undaunted by their ouster. Host Montgomery was appropriately joined at the Pit Stop by a ballet dancer, and on Rex's way out, he playfully embraced and dipped the woman.

"We got to see Canada and do some amazing stuff," he said later. "So we're really happy."

— Follow @CP_Patch on Twitter.

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